


noone loved him more by more

by voodoochild



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River has always known. Now she understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	noone loved him more by more

**Author's Note:**

> This was a serenity_santa backup present for the prompt: "gritty, hardcore Simon/River smut", which I attempted to live up to. e.e. cummings owns the title and excerpt quoted below - cause you better believe I ain't that talented.

_"children guessed (but only a few  
and down they forgot as up they grew  
autumn winter spring summer)  
that noone loved him more by more  
when by now and tree by leaf  
she laughed his joy she cried his grief  
bird by snow and stir by still  
anyone's any was all to her"_   
– e.e. cummings, "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

~*~*~*~

She understands Simon. Knows what makes him Simon, and not Mal. Not Jayne. Not Wash or Book or anyone else. Knows what makes him stutter over every word but pronounce "dyasthoproponil" smoother than sailing. Smooth like flying.

She can't fly when he gives her the smoothers. Brain all sticky and stuttery like his words and she doesn't remember what they've taught her. Hands won't move. Grip the yoke too tight and Serenity shakes under the pressure. River knows she's keening, but she's not Kaylee not Wash not Mal and she doesn't know how to make it stop.

Simon's good at making things stop.

Took her away from hands of blue with hands of black and a silver baton. Made her sleep until they found Serenity and it was a safe place until she woke up. Fixed her and helped her and saved her until it was her turn. Because the world had already turned and she must follow.

Turning, turning, turning through the years . . .

Once for the year of her birth. Simon had been jealous – why was the new baby more special than he was? Once for his eighteenth birthday – for he was a man whether he knew it or not. Once for her fourteenth birthday. Dresses of red exchanged for tunics and hands of blue. They'd taken the girl River should have been and unmade her into nothing and no one. Once for her seventeenth birthday, when they found Serenity, and once more for Miranda and her turn.

She almost lost Simon. They were all lost, some (_MalZoeWash_) more than others, but then a bullet had gone through Simon and River couldn't fix him. She couldn't fix Simon, but she could save everyone else. Had thrown herself to the lions and emerged victorious. Kaylee'd even made her a laurel crown.

River had tried and tried to stop the endless permutations and infinite equations that all yielded one answer: Simon had almost died without her.

It wasn't right! Length times height times width shouldn't equal two to the ninth power. And no matter how much "better" she was supposed to be getting, it never would be. Because they'd taken her apart and put her back together out of order – marriage comes before sex comes before children and why wasn't Simon her matched pair?

Simon was supposed to fix her. Had finally stopped trying to fix Kaylee, because she wasn't broken and was the only one on the ship who'd chosen to live in Serenity. Kaylee could choose to leave Serenity, too – not like Inara, who had already left to steer her own rudderless ship, and didn't know she'd left them to crash.

Two by two the crew divided – because three into six always had to be two. Mal and Zoe stitched up the void left by Wash and marched to their old cadences and spoke their old shorthand again. Kaylee welded herself to Jayne, who knew she didn't need to be fixed like a wound, but cared-for like a gun.

Which left Simon and River, River and Simon. Just like it had always been.

~*~*~*~

It's late, but time is irrelevant onboard a ship. River sets Serenity to autopilot and pads catlike (cats-cradle curiosity killed the cat) down to the passenger dorms. They still sleep in there, she and Simon, even though they've been crew for a year. Better, though. Sets them apart, keeps them from assimilating into Serenity completely.

River loves Serenity, but she loves her brother more.

She needs to remember what her life was like before the Academy and Serenity and Miranda. When it was only her and Simon. Parents to watch them, yes, but just another set of overseers – see-sawing seeing over the sea. Doesn't want anyone to see her and Simon, either. This is their business, on their terms, and never to be bartered away. And she knows – has always known, but never understood why – that what she and Simon are to each other could be misclassified, filed into the wrong cabinets. Labeled with silver-sharp similes that mean nothing.

So she slides the door to his (their) room shut, stripping out of her boots socks dress underwear and crawling into his bed like they were still children, huddling together after a nightmare. Now, they still have nightmares, but they're not children. Bad dreams can't be chased off with a hug and a kiss, nor can they be banished for good by quicksilver drugs that just make her sick, not better.

Simon's still asleep – used to sleep through the loudest of thunderstorms on Osiris. She would sit by the windows and count one one-thousand, two one-thousand, till she got up to three hundred one-thousand and Mother scooped her up to put her back to bed. Simon slept like a rock, and rivers know how to weather rocks. She pulls the covers up around them – hide and seek and he never could figure out her secret hiding spot – and settles herself astride his pajama-clad hips. Proper, pristine, perfect but never pure Simon never sleeps unclothed.

His hips adjust to the slight weight of her, and she can feel him, hard and throbbing beneath her. Dreaming of girls with Kaylee's smile and Inara's lips and everything else River. Hazy, searing, sweltering dreams, where he's not guilty for wanting what he shouldn't have, and could have anything at all if he only reaches out for it.

And he does reach out, caught in the middle of dream-River and real-River, and not caring which one he gets. Hands, sweeping up her waist and feathering over the tips of her breasts and oh it's been so long since he's touched her.

She misses him and his clever hands. The delicious and delirious scrape of his nails against her skin, tracing concentric counter-clockwise against her body. The way he pulls her against him, hard and driving and knowing he's not going to break her. She's already been broken, after all, and he can never hurt her more than everyone else has. The way he groans as she unlaces pajama bottoms and slides them off him, brushing kisses against legs and thighs and cock. His hands, lacing in her hair and urging her more. Faster. Harder. Salty, bitter tang of him on her tongue, which she so rarely gets to enjoy, because he doesn't think it's right.

Of course it isn't, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Thinks she's a child, that she doesn't know what she's doing. Everyone sees River as a child, but she's not. Never has been. And it's with Simon she can feel most like River. Hears her name chanted over and over, tumbling faster and faster and she likes when he loses control like this. Knows he's woken up ever since she tugged his pajamas off, and still needs what she can do for him. Knows he could never refuse her, because she asks and asks and never needs to ask him for anything.

Except when she does.

Please more River harder faster no now now NOW and she can't breathe when he first slides into her. It's harsh and sweet and painful and beautiful and she can't quantify, calculate, or organize it. Her and Simon don't have an equation other than one plus one equals one, and it doesn't matter that it makes sense only to her. It doesn't need to make sense to anyone else.

His fingers dig crescents into her hips as he surges against her. Ten fingers, ten half-moon star sun 160 degree angles, each 0.2 mm deep. They'll be redandpurple and sting a bit, come morning. They always are. Her hips will sting, her body will ache (goodache and badache), and her heart/brain will try and remember every single second of this joining. She will remember the "o" of his lips as she rises and falls along the length of him. She will remember the clean, angled lines of his neck and jaw as he throws his head back in pleasure. She will remember the wild beats of her heart – _andiamo, presto, vivace_ – and the spiral of want his middle finger sets off as it circles her clit.

She will not remember the precise moment of her climax.

Because with Simon, it's an _arabesque-chasse-tour-jete_, cued to the combination of his movements – frenzied friction against and inside her sex, hands everywhere at once, even though that shouldn't be possible either – and his voice in her ear, hoarsely whispering nonsense I-love-yous. It's not when his speech breaks apart into little gaspy pieces and it's not when his so-smooth movements become choppy. It's not when she guides his left hand to her breast and his name breaks into a sob. It's all of these moments and even more that River can't remember simply because it's too much.

So she doesn't – just slumps forward and kisses Simon. Kisses "I love you" and "yes" into him and kisses "this is wrong" and "no" out of him. He tightens his arms around her (I'll-never-leave-you), and curls into her embrace sleepily.

He doesn't have to say it, but she knows.

River knows, and understands.


End file.
